World Music CD Reviews Europe

So often overlooked musically by the rest of the world in favor of its Scandinavian neighbors, Denmark’s folk music was not immune to the surges of interest that grew out of the ’60s and ’70s, and today’s Danish folk scene is paying dividends on the social investments made by that generation. Folk & Roots 2006 concentrates on the instrumentalists and fiddle-and-accordion dominated groups that will sound most familiar to ears accustomed to Scandinavian music of the likes previously released by Green Linnet and Xenophile. And that Irish-Scottish-Danish connection goes further: As Irishman Tom Sherlock points out in F&R’s liner notes, the Danes founded Dublin, but it sounds as though, ever since, the cultural invasion has gone the other way around. Fiddler Gunner Friis, for example, leaps and drags like a bluer-eyed Kevin Burke, and groups such as The Trad Lads and Moving Cloud are even more overt in their synthesis of Celtic and Danish musics.